ART

John Miller in conversation with Laura López Paniagua on the occasion of "The Insanity of Place" at Galerie Barbara Weiss. The interview, specifically, revolves around "Primary Structures"(2017), a PowerPoint work in which the artist juxtaposes words and images in a meditation on mortality.

John Miller in conversation with Laura López Paniagua on the occasion of "The Insanity of Place" at Galerie Barbara Weiss. The interview, specifically, revolves around "Primary Structures"(2017), a PowerPoint work in which the artist juxtaposes words and images in a meditation on mortality.

Can film transcend its material embodiment beyond celluloid print? John Winn examines Derek Jarman’s audio-visual work Blue (1993), reading it as a transmedial performance rather than a film, while foregrounding corporealities, textures, sounds and voices, thereby opening up the ways in which Blue brings to light questions concerning death.

How can things exceed the language we use to name them? John Winn examines Cy Twombly's assemblages, while reading the works in conversation with Giorgio Agamben, Arthur Danto, Kate Nesin and postwar New York artist Robert Rauschenberg.

What can the work of Mike Kelley teach us about the media landscape of today? Artist and critic John Miller explores Kelley’s manifesto A Stopgap Measure, the rise of Trump and the politics of our over-saturated image culture.

How does the past sound like? Artist Abigail Sidebotham dives into the ancient sound of an abandoned copper quarry with her experimental film Tattered Rocks, while giving rise to the sound of the present and a vision of the future, offering metaphysical reflections on the nature of language and our relation to the world.

Can a civilian ever understand the experience of a soldier? Artist Peter Voss-Knude talks to war psychologist Anne Lillelund about the challenges facing soldiers returning from war, the effects of trauma and the importance of the body, whilst reflecting on his own music and practice.

Whereof does it seem impossible to speak? Scholar Darla Crispin turns to Susan Sontag's influential essay 'The Aesthetics of Silence' and her ground-breaking Illness as Metaphor, in order to make audible Sontag's own silent dilemma of her illness, while calling for a new ethics and aesthetics of silence.

Can we access the plurality of our contemporary world through silence? And to what do the limits of our sonic imagination attest to? Artist and writer Salomé Voegelin re-listens to the body in silence, so as to grant a new agency, whereby she re-positions the relationship between the self and others at the edge of the aesthetic and political.

Is it possible to capture the essential in silence? Photographer Ryan Trimble attempts to catch a glimpse of the self's multiplicity and fragmentation on celluloid, embedding it in the external context of our lived experience, while wondering whether this ambition is always and already impossible to attain.

How can art introduce ambiguity into our experience of the everyday? Artist Becky Beasley talks to four by three about her practice, muteness as a form of resistance, the liminal space between photography and sculpture, and the place of death in the photographic image.

How does sound transform the spaces we inhabit? four by three talks to artist Susan Philipsz about her practice, sound as a form of sculpture, the politics of silence and song, vocalising forgotten histories and the ethical challenges of remembrance.

How can art and poetry encourage existential trajectories that move beyond the nihilism of late-modernity? American philosopher Iain Thomson turns towards the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in order to illustrate nihilism as our deepest historical problem and art as our best response, while establishing Heidegger's insights into postmodernity and technology.

What is the relationship between contemporary capitalism and art? Art critic and historian Hal Foster talks to four by three magazine about the shifting practices of the avant-garde, artists Isa Genzken and Thomas Hirschhorn, while addressing whether art can resist the present nihilistic world in an age often defined as post-critical.

How can architecture create and utilize public spaces? four by three talks to the architectural collective Assemble about their Turner Prize winning project 'Granby Four Streets', the aspirations of utopianism and the social nature of their practice.

How is literature a force of resistance? Philosophers Juan Manuel Garrido Wainer and Alexander García Düttmann discuss Alex's recent essay 'The Art of Resistance', exploring the political character of literary fiction, literature as a living force, and the political strength of powerlessness.

What can literature teach us about resistance and how can this lead to politically subversive effects? Examining Maurice Blanchot's remarks on the revolution of May '68 and Michel Foucault's on the Iranian Revolution, Alex Düttmann argues that literary fiction provides insight into one of the strongest forms of defiance.

Where will you find the world? Steffi Pusch's photographic work is an extension of the process of how to relate to the world around us. Her work reflects the ambivalent experience of being at home, being elsewhere, being alien, being different, being involved.

What is the relationship between rehearsal and revolutionary political change? four by three talks to artist Leonor Serrano Rivas about her recent body of work, exploring the importance of the chorus, the ideas of Augusto Boal, and the role of improvisation in her practice.

How can painting express an experience beyond an appearance? four by three talks to Phoebe Unwin about her current solo exhibition 'Distant People and Self-Soothing Objects' at Wilkinson Gallery, discussing painting, photography, the transitory and the human significance of distraction

What possibilities remain for abstract painting in the 21st century? Callum Green's paintings explore the potentials of the modernist drive to formalism and abstraction in the wake of commercialism, painting's exhaustion and the collapse of medium specificity.

Does photography have an essence? What is the potential of the photographic image as a form of reflection and future-directed activity? Art theorist Lisa Stein considers the nature of photography in light of the image of Aylan Kurdi, taken up by the UK press in September 2015.

How are the categories of literary forms decided and who is the one making the decisions? Why does gender or sexual orientation continue to be a prism for determining an author's work? Looking at the work of Chris Kraus and its initial reception, Rebecca Jagoe considers the conflation of the personal with the philosophical and the consequences of a text's refusal to adhere to one genre.

What does a painting sound like and what does sound look like? Leonie Shinn-Morris listens to the six artists that responded with a sonic installation to six individual paintings from the National Gallery’s permanent collection. Experiencing just how much the literal sound of the exhibition resonates like its paintings, Leonie enters into a conversation, creating a world enriched by the temporality of sound.

What is the significance of taking a selfie? Philosopher Alexander García Düttmann explores the potential of the selfie as both a feature of the culture industry and as a creative act in the work of Walt Whitman and Agnes Martin.

Where is paradise? In an attempt to find the answer, photographer Sara Yun dives into the depths of her being. She explores in this photo series the space between the here and there, reflecting on the world and its shadows, capturing the quotidian in a spellbinding contemplation.

Is home a place, a condition or a feeling? Photographer Jesse Boyd Reid tells a visual narrative in this intimate photo series about his small home town in Australia, remembering what it was like, forgetting how it was and imagining what it could have been like.

How can sculpture explore the relation between the human and the non-human? Wanda Wieser's artistic practice investigates the relation between matter and meaning, alchemy and the corporeal power of geological processes and objects.

How does a promise of the infinite affect us as finite beings? Can finitude itself open up a mystical experience of the transcendent? Artist Hans-Jacob Schmidt evokes the figure of a quarry as a site of doubt, faith and border between these two realms.

Are artists, consumers and critics guilty of a stubborn addiction to the past or have we become too obsessed with the new? Music critic Giuseppe Zevolli ties Holly Herndon's album Platform to the wider phenomenon of nostalgia for the past, while confronting her experimental compositions in the here and now.